Economists increasingly emphasise the role of financial literacy in explaining savings, investment, and retirement planning decisions. This column uses data from a nationwide survey in Japan to investigate the relationship between financial literacy and late-life anxiety. Financial literacy appears to reduce anxiety by making people both financially and psychologically prepared for old age.

Many countries are increasing the age at which people can start claiming state-funded pensions. One objection often raised is that such policies are unfair because some will be too unhealthy to remain in paid work. This column compares employment rates in England of older people today to those of earlier generations, and also to those of younger people today. These comparisons suggest that a significant minority of older people appear to be unable to work on the grounds of health alone.

Most of the world is now at the point where the support ratio is becoming adverse, and the growth of the global workforce is slowing. This column argues that these changes will have profound and negative effects on economic growth. This implies that negative real interest rates are not the new normal, but rather an extreme artefact of a series of trends, several of which are coming to an end. By 2025, real interest rates should have returned to their historical equilibrium value of around 2.5–3%.

There has been a long-term downward trend in labour’s share of national income, depressing both demand and inflation, and thus prompting ever more expansionary monetary policies. This column argues that, while understandable in a short-term business cycle context, this has exacerbated longer-term trends, increasing inequality and financial distortions. Perhaps the most fundamental problem has been over-reliance on debt finance. The authors propose policies to raise the share of equity finance in housing markets; such reforms could be extended to other sectors of the economy.

The world’s population is ageing, due to both increasing longevity and decreasing fertility. This column shows that the net effect of ageing on capital accumulation (and therefore growth) depends on which of these two factors dominates, and also on the structure of the pension system. Under a pension system with defined contributions, a reduction in fertility induces adjustments in savings and working life that unambiguously increase capital per worker.

Policymakers in the developed world are fretting over how to care (and pay) for their ageing populations. This column unpacks the thinking behind Japan’s extensive Long-term Care Insurance Program, arguing that there are too many sweeping assumptions about the elderly and how they behave. So how can we best design policy for long-term care? As ever, it is only from well-funded and comprehensive datasets – such as the Japanese Study on Aging and Retirement, now in its fourth year – that effective policy will come.

During the economic and financial crisis, fiscal positions across OECD countries deteriorated sharply. This column agues that population ageing and trends in social spending will further challenge the sustainability of fiscal balances. Research suggests that the scale of fiscal consolidation that will be needed to ensure long-term sustainability is large, but policymakers can look at the potential benefits of policy reform in mitigating budget pressures.

What happens after the crisis ends? This column estimates the long-term effects of the current cyclical downturn on Eurozone economies. In the absence of any real impetus for bold reform, estimates show that the damage will indeed be long lasting, permanently impairing growth for an ageing population that requires higher growth capacity more than ever before.

The crisis has shot holes in government budgets devoted to pro-growth public goods. This column argues that health-related public goods support long-term economic growth. Governments may be more inclined to focus on spending related directly to jobs, such as education and welfare-to-work programmes, but health should not be forgotten

Japan is under new leadership, bringing fresh attempts to tackle deflation. This column argues that the lessons we can learn are Going forward, a change of party politics with every change of government will likely become a recurring event in Japan. In order to restore people’s confidence in the fiscal management and social security system in the light of that prospect, institutional systems should be designed in a way to allow flexibility, premised on the fact that the government cannot make commitments into the remote future. Political leaders – whether they belong to the ruling or opposition parties – need to come up with new ideas toward achieving that end.

How will the shrinking labour force pay for the pensions and healthcare of the growing elderly? This column argues that linking retirement ages to longevity would alleviate a significant part of the deterioration in public finances and ensure that the burden of adjustment is carried by those gaining from increases in longevity.